This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

While the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), at its board meeting today, will announce that Atlantic Yards still would take ten years to build--thus avoiding a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and delay in project approval--the revised deal for the Vanderbilt Yard revealed yesterday puts that timetable in significant doubt.

Notably, Forest City Ratner would have until September 1, 2016 to build a new permanent railyard. That would leave a little more than three years--until the later part of 2019--to finish the project.

However, the construction schedule approved as part of the Final Environmental Impact Statement projected that, to complete the project, it would take six years and eight months to build new platforms and then towers on them after the railyard had been built.

The schedule had the railyard finished by March 24, 2010, with the final building, at the northeast corner of the project site (and eastern end of the railyard block) to be completed December 30, 2016.

(Click to enlarge)

Platform timetable

The construction schedule indicated that the platform for Block 1120, the middle block of the railyard, was to take 16 months to build, from November 2, 2009 to February 28, 2011.

The platform for Block 1121, the eastern block of the railyard, was to take 20 months, from February 1, 2011 to September 28, 2012.

The first platform was to be built while the railyard was still being completed--presumably only the eastern end would have been under construction. The building of the second platform was to commence only one month before the first platform was completed.

Accelerated schedule?

Is there a way for Forest City to speed up the construction of the platforms once the railyard is built? Or the towers on top of them?

If not, there's no way to meet that end-of-2019 projected completion date.